).The adsorption of CO2 on the Fe3O4(001)-(√2×√2)R45° surface was studied experimentally using temperature programmed desorption (TPD), photoelectron spectroscopies (UPS and XPS), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). CO2 binds most strongly at defects related to Fe2+, including antiphase domain boundaries in the surface reconstruction and above incorporated Fe interstitials. At higher coverages, CO2 adsorbs at fivefold-coordinated Fe3+ sites with a binding energy of 0.4 eV. Above a coverage of 4 molecules per (√2×√2)R45° unit cell, further adsorption results in a compression of the first monolayer up to a density approaching that of a CO2 ice layer. Surprisingly, desorption of the second monolayer occurs at a lower temperature (~84 K) than CO2 multilayers (~88 K), suggestive of a metastable phase or diffusion-limited island growth. The paper also discusses design considerations for a vacuum system optimized to study the surface chemistry of metal oxide single crystals, including the calibration and characterisation of a molecular beam source for quantitative TPD measurements.
Corresponding author: Gareth S. Parkinson (parkinson).
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